A testing 18-mile trek along one of the UK’s most dramatic ridgelines

At just before 9am, I stuck my head out of my tent and wondered whether I should do it or not. I squinted, trying to make out the path that sidesteps the north-west edge of the loch and climbs to join the famous ridgeline of Skye’s Trotternish peninsula. On another day, I’d have taken a dip in the loch’s inky waters, but this morning was a rotter. It was cold, strong winds were battering the tent and the world around me was cloaked in a thick fog. Looking south, I could just about make out the jagged peaks and pinnacles of the Quiraing – tantalising or menacing, or both.

The ridge walk, from Flodigarry to the Storr car park, covers around 18 brutal miles and 1750m of ascent. Once you’ve crossed the Uig to Staffin road a few miles in, there are no escape routes. It’s exposed, boggy, mostly pathless and notoriously tricky to navigate in bad weather. Most people do it over two days, choosing to camp on the ridge – but with practically no shelter, this is only a sensible option in good weather.

I’d actually set out to hike the Skye Trail, an unofficial route traversing the largest island in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, of which the Trotternish Ridge forms the northernmost – and most challenging – leg. So I’ll begin where the ridge walk started for me, on day two of the Skye Trail on the shore of Loch Hasco.

Pitched up on the northern side of Loch Hasco

I brewed a coffee and considered my options. Was I an idiot to attempt such a demanding and remote route in these conditions? I could find a campsite and sit out the bad weather.

Then, through the fog, a flash of neon pink appeared, bobbing along the path I’d just been eyeing with suspicion and dread. The neon in question was a rucksack – or its rain cover, most likely – and its owner a solo hiker on a multi-day expedition, judging by the size of the bag. This is what I needed to see. Strength in numbers! Doing this may be foolish, but I wouldn’t be the only fool on the ridge. If I set off now, I could do the whole thing today.

Moving landscapes

The Trotternish landscape is geologically bonkers. Formed by a series of post-glacial landslides – the largest of their kind in European history – the escarpment looks, literally, out of this world. This is especially true on the Quiraing, the first section of the ridgeline I’d encounter. It’s like a still-frame of a stormy sea, with strange, dramatic rock formations that resemble cresting waves. It gives the impression of a land still in flux – and, astonishingly, it is. As the hard volcanic basalt puts pressure on the softer sandstone beneath it, the Quiraing slides a few millimetres a year, and the nearby road needs frequent repairs as the earth relentlessly buckles the tarmac.

As I reached the Quiraing, surrounded by imposing cliffs and towering black pinnacles, I had that feeling you get at the edge of an ocean, where you realise how little your life matters. Here, I was the only person around (the pink rucksack was long gone) but as I wound my way through the rock formations, ever closer to the car park, the path became busier. I was grateful for this: I was about to need a helping hand. I’d already steeled myself for the rocky gully I’d need to cross, but when I got to it I completely lost my nerve. The gully was deep, the drop sheer and the wet rock looked dangerously slippery. There was no way I’d be able to cross that with the weight of my 70L pack and the wind knocking me about. I stood on its edge, trembling, looking down, across, all around, trying to fathom how I could possibly continue.

Then, three nimble teenagers appeared on the other side, unencumbered by packs or fear. “You OK?” one of them shouted. “No, I don’t think I can do this,” I said, pathetically gesturing to my backpack and back to the drop below me. One of them jumped down into the gully and offered his hand and words of encouragement. I got down onto my bum and, with his help, clumsily lowered myself down, my pack catching the rock as I went, keeping me uncomfortably off-balance. How could I be sweating so much in this cold? He pushed himself back up and helped me climb up the other side. To this young man, you’re a hero.

After that, the path undulated, rising and falling in tricky sections of scree, my quads doing overtime to stop me sliding. “Hey, were you the camper at the loch?” I’d been so focused on my feet, I hadn’t noticed a couple ahead of me who’d stopped for a breather. “We passed you earlier as you were packing up. It made us laugh, watching you frantically trying to stop your tent flying away. Just a few years ago, that would have been us.”

The 78-year-old couple from New Hampshire told me they’d been wild camping all their lives, until the Covid lockdowns put their active lifestyle on hold. Now, they can’t trust their bodies to handle the burdens of backpacking and feel the pandemic stole their final few years of sleeping in the wild. They were, however, still walking 7-8 hours a day; if I can manage that in my seventies, I’ll be happy. I was just in awe they’d managed the cross the gully. “Yes, but we’re not carrying your load!”

By midday I reached the Uig to Staffin road, where a car park was heaving with people standing on its fringes, taking pictures of the weird and wonderful shapes around them while happily avoiding the path itself. At the snack van, I bought a cup of tea and told the man I was planning on walking the rest of the ridge today. He eyed me doubtfully. “I only know one person who’s done it in a day, and he’s a very fit, strong man. And he said it was one of the toughest things he’s done.”

A ridge too far?

I took my tea and wedged myself between a boulder and a grassy bank to shelter from the wind. This was my last chance to pull out. After this, there would be no way off the ridge but onwards or back the way I came. I considered what he said. I’m not a fit, strong man. But I’m a fit-ish, strong-ish woman. I might crumble at another gully, but as long as there are no more of those, I’m up to the challenge.

As I downed the dregs of my tea, something caught the corner of my eye. That neon pink again! Climbing up the ridge on the other side of the car park. My mind was made up; if he was doing it, so would I. I told the van guy I was off, and he filled my flask with boiling water, relayed the latest forecast (strong south-westerly winds all day and night) and wished me well.

A rare moment of clarity, looking east to Staffin Bay

My rucksack beacon (bottom right), guiding the way up Beinn Edra

For the first hour or so, the pink rucksack ahead of me was my beacon. As long as I had him in sight, walked south and kept the cliff edge to my left, navigating would be a cakewalk. The fog alternately thickened and cleared as I climbed the 466m Bioda Buidhe, gifting me occasional views of Staffin Bay and the Quiraing behind me. From there the route descends and rises again, the first serious climb: Beinn Edra at 611m. Suddenly, halfway up, I was fully in the clouds. I could see just a few metres ahead; I stopped and spun around, and in every direction the land seemed to end. Small hummocks looked like ridges, bogs looked like tracks. Where the cliff edge was it was impossible to tell – there could be a sheer drop anywhere. I couldn’t even figure out which way I had just been walking.

It’s hard to overstate how disorientating this was. I tried following my instinct but quickly found myself wading through ankle-deep bogs. I whipped out my phone, on which I’d plotted my route, and checked the GPS. Instinct was no good to me; in just a few minutes I’d gone completely off-course. To correct myself, I’d need do the opposite of what my brain was telling me. Hadn’t I come from there? The clouds thinned for a split-second and I spied my rucksack beacon, the faintest speck of pink in the distance, going a different way altogether – by my GPS’s reckoning, descending west into the valley. That can’t be right. Can it? I felt mad.

Staying on track

I stopped again, rooted to the spot. Perhaps my GPS is wrong. I took out my compass and checked it against the map: it wasn’t wrong. I had no idea where the rucksack was going but it was probably time to stop thinking of it as my beacon. As I was to discover the next day, this was the right decision. After that, I checked GPS frequently to make sure I was on track. Without it, I’d have been screwed. With no visible features to cross-reference, a map and compass alone would have been useless.

After Beinn Edra, the route undulated over six more peaks, all the while the wind and rain driving sideways, piercing my face and soaking my boots. I was also really hungry. I tried to eat some cashews but my now-numb fingers couldn’t handle a task of such precision, so I tipped the whole bag towards my mouth, half the nuts falling to the boggy ground. I was glad no one was there to see that.

Some time later, I had been expecting to drop steeply down to Bealach Hartaval but here I was, continuing along a squelchy plateau, following the ridge as it curved round to my right. Where was the descent? I retraced my steps, aligning myself to the red marker on my phone where I should have turned abruptly left. I stood on the spot, peering down over the edge. Just thick cloud. This was nothing but a fatal drop.

Suddenly, three Americans appeared from nowhere, the only other people I’d see since leaving the car park. Their guidebook and GPS were saying the same thing. We paced the route up and down, flummoxed, trying to understand how there could be a passage down these near-vertical cliffs. Then, as if by magic, the clouds started to lift and, little by little, we could make out a fissure in the rocks, impossibly steep but undeniably a route down to the bealach. After a short scramble that took careful foot placement and a lot of nervous bum-shuffling, a long painful precipitous slope led me 130m all the way down to the bottom.

In better conditions, this would have been a good time to stop for a rest. Instead it was a punishingly steep and direct clamber to the 668m summit of Hartaval, then another sheer drop into Bealach a’Chuirn, followed by the final climb up the Storr – though thankfully this time crossing the contour lines at a more manageable angle. As I dragged myself up, I recalled the SW wind forecast and realised that, once I got over the other side, I’d be sheltered at last from these bastard winds. I met the path on the Storr’s north face, with no inclination nor energy to detour to its 719m summit, and went over the ridge to pick up a track that skirts the upper corrie in the shadow of the Storr’s eastern cliffs.

It was still. Wonderfully, shockingly, eerily still. And here in the corrie was a grassy bowl, perfect for camping. I’d planned to get past the Old Man of Storr, the famous isolated pinnacle on the mountain’s southern flanks, but it was already 8pm and this sheltered spot was too good to pass up. To top it off, the clouds had continued to clear since Bealach Hartaval and I was now blessed with sweeping views across to Bearreraig Bay. I reckoned that if I started pitching up now, I’d be dead to the world within 30 minutes – and this felt like a solid win.

A wild night

It was, for about three hours, during which I got the most delicious dreamy sleep. But the winds turned, whipping up and gusting alarmingly from all directions, carrying with them bucketloads of rain. It was a long night of continually re-pegging the porch and sending out prayers to the Old Man of Storr. When morning finally arrived, I was back in dense clouds, the tent was saturated and my rucksack was sitting in a large puddle.

On the upper corrie on the eastern slopes of the Storr, looking across to Bearreraig Bay

I packed up to continue the final mile or so to the car park, stopping only briefly when I was inches away from the Old Man of Storr – only within spitting distance could I actually see the thing. Visibility was as bad as, if not worse than, yesterday.

Down at the car park, where my bus for Portree was due in just 20 minutes, I spotted something familiar: a pink rucksack. He made it! Though only just. After I’d seen him wandering off in the wrong direction, he got lost and took a long, difficult detour through the boggy hinterland of the peninsula. When he finally found his way back to the trail, he decided to take shelter at the foot of Beinn Edra, pitching his tent early and hunkering down, ready to tackle the rest of the ridge the next day. In the night, the fierce winds ripped through his tent, breaking the structure and leaving him open to the elements. He wrapped himself in the flysheet and tried to stay warm and dry, but it was a thankless task and he knew that to get moving was his best chance of resisting hypothermia. It was a narrow escape, judging by the state of him that morning. A couple in a motorhome had plied him with hot drinks to warm him up, but hours later he was still sopping wet, his skin tinged with blue.

I decided then I couldn’t continue with the Skye Trail. I’d completed the ridge, and I was relieved that I had made it this far. But seeing him brought home just how hairy it can be to solo hike in bad weather. So I took myself to Portree campsite, where I planned another, lower-risk challenge for the remainder of my trip. The Trotternish Ridge was soon to be the Forgotten(ish) Ridge, and I would take on the far more hospitable Great Glen Way. (On this, I had a blast.)

I will, at some point, come back to walk this ridge again. It was breathtaking even in the fog, so I am eager to be there on a clear day. I’ll go when it’s pleasant enough to take tea breaks, stretch my legs and enjoy the views. And I’ll do it over two days with a pack half the size, and camp in the gloriously grassy valley of Bealach a’Chuirn, where I’ll cook a nice dinner and pour a large cup of wine. Because one thing I’ve learned about the Trotternish Ridge is that powering along it with scant opportunity to appreciate its enigmatic beauty is no way to treat this surreal, dramatic corner of the world.